Viewers of the ZDF program “heute-journal” were worried about the presenter Gundula Gause (58) on Monday evening. Barely ten minutes after she confidently led through the news program from 9:45 p.m., as usual, she suddenly spoke slurred and apparently had problems reading her text from the teleprompter. Nevertheless, she moderated a contribution on the current situation in Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Afterwards, however, she did not return to the camera; her colleague Dunja Hayali (49) took over the moderation and finished the “heute-journal”. At the end of the show, Hayali gave some information about Gause’s health: “The fact that I had to finish the show alone is simply because Gundula just got a little dizzy. It can happen – but the all-clear: she’s fine better again.”
Gundula Gause has been with ZDF since 1989 and has been a co-presenter in “heute-journal” since 1993; she has taken over as the main presenter since January 2022. Gause lives in Mainz and has been married to the dentist and FDP politician Peter Schmitz since 1997, with whom she has two children. In the show “Kölner Treff” Gause said in September 2017 that she officially had the double name Gause-Schmitz.
